Reaching Beyond Earth's Atmosphere

The History of Mars Exploration (NASA)

To follow up the successful launch of MSL, which NASA confirmed last night was inserted into an almost perfect trajectory towards Mars, today we take a look at the history of successful Mars Exploration missions by NASA.

The History of Mars Exploration

Year

Name

Type

Summary

1964

Mariner 4

Flyby

First spacecraft to flyby of Mars and return close-up pictures of the surface. Returned 21 images during the flyby.

1969

Mariner 6

Flyby

Returned 75 images during flyby and provided data used to program Mariner 7 for it’s flyby five days later.

1969

Mariner 7

Flyby

Returned 126 images during it’s flyby.

1971

Mariner 9

Orbiter

First spacecraft to orbit another planet, returned 7,329 images while operational. Still in orbit today and will remain so until about 2022.

1975

Viking 1

Orbiter/Lander

First spacecraft to land on Mars, was operational for 2245 sols, contact was lost when a faulty command sequence sent from the ground overwrote the antenna pointing software. The Viking 1 Lander was named the Thomas Mutch Memorial Station in January 1982 in honor of the leader of the Viking imaging team.

1975

Viking 2

Orbiter/Lander

Twin of Viking 1 and second spacecraft to land on Mars. Viking two was operation for 1281 sols, during which time it returned over 16,000 images and a large amount of scientific data.

1996

Mars Global Surveyor

Orbiter

Arrived at Mars 9/12/1997, began mapping operations in 1996, lose of contact 11/2/2006

1996

Mars Pathfinder

Lander/Rover

Lander on Mars 7/4/1997, deployed rover Sojourner to explore the surface around the lander. The lander sent more than 16,500 pictures and made 8.5 million measurements of the atmospheric pressure, temperature and wind speed. Lander renamed Carl Sagan Memorial Station.

2001

Mars Odyssey

Orbiter

Arrived at Mars 10/24/2001, began orbital operations 2/19/2002. Still operational today. As well as providing a large amount of images and scientific data the craft is used as a relay for MER and Phoenix.

Arrived at Mars 3/10/2006, began orbital operations in 11/2006. Still operational today with a variety of scientific instruments. Also provides relay capabilities to MER. MRO’s telecommunications systems will transfer more data back to earth than all previous spacecraft sent to the planet combined, more than 26 terabits.

2007

Phoenix Mars Lander

Lander

PML arrived on Mars 5/28/2008 and was operational for 155 sols, the original mission was designed for 90 sols. The instruments were designed to look for microbial life and water. Returned more than 25 gigabits of scientific data for analysis.